Dessert Day: the "It takes HOW long?" edition

So Deidre came over yesterday for yet another installment of Dessert Day. And in keeping with our previous Dessert Days, the weather was HORRIFIC. Seriously, you guys. Every single Dessert Day is either a millionty degrees, insanely humid, or pouring with rain. I don't know how we manage it, I really don't...

ANYWAY. We started out making the dough for this chocolate and cinnamon bread thing. In typical Dessert Day fashion, we kludged it a little - my local supermarket only stocked milk powder in 2kg bags, so we left that out, we didn't have any guar gum, and we used Schweppes soda water instead of San Pellegrino, because we're not made of money, yo.

As we went to clear off the bench and get started, Deidre found the magazine section from Sunday's newspaper, which had Ryan Gosling on the cover. Obviously, he became a Dessert Day spectator:

So we made the dough, which resulted in much "Hmm"-ing and "Seriously? TWO TABLESPOONS OF YEAST??"-ing and "Cream cheese???"-ing, and set it aside to rise for an hour. Then we got started on cooking the quinoa for these savoury treats while we started putting together the ingredients for these mint chocolate chip cookies. At which point we promptly discovered that the box of baking soda I've been baking with since approximately 1997 was no longer with us. So while Deidre took care of the quinoa, I marched the three blocks back to the supermarket in search of more.

Discovery of the day: my supermarket only stocks baking soda in 1kg boxes. A KILO OF BAKING SODA. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be passing that thing down to Little Miss A in my will...

Deidre and me with the box of baking soda. Totally to scale.

ANYWAY. So I got back and after we spent five minutes cackling hysterically about how much baking soda we had, we progressed with the cookies. They're pretty easy, and if you live in Australia and are deprived of Andes Mints (I had a packet of their baking chips, purchased at a Walmart in rural Virginia), I'm fairly certain you could replace them with 1 cup of dark chocolate chips, and replace the vanilla with mint essence, and end up with more or less the same result.

Once the cookies were in the oven (I highly recommend using a cookie scoop if you have one. It would have taken FOREVER otherwise), we went to check on the bread dough. Despite its two tablespoons of yeast and having been placed in a warm spot for an hour, it hadn't risen at all, leading us to the conclusion that in the future, we're going to prestart the yeast no matter what a recipe says. BECAUSE OF REASONS, DAMMIT.

Then we read the line in the recipe that said "Place covered bowl of dough in refrigerator overnight" and went "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, NO." So we proceeded to the next step, and rolled it out into a square. We cut up the cold butter as ordered, put it in the dough, folded it up, and rolled it out again, all as directed. The result - rather predictably - was this:

MMMMMMM, BUTTER CHUNKS.

Thankfully, the cookies came out of the oven at about that time, so we left the dough to think about what it had done while we taste tested them:

Word to the wise: the walnuts seem like a weird addition to a chocolate-y, minty cookie, but DO NOT LEAVE THEM OUT. They cut through some of the sweetness.

Ryan approved:

Yes, we're mature adults. 

Back to the incredibly confusing dough. We covered it in a truly frightening amount of cinnamon, then crumbled the chocolate ganache over it, then plonked on a bunch of chopped almonds:

Yes, that's the butter showing through the layer of cinnamon...

Then we rolled it up, which led to much "Oh God, is this even going to work??"-ing, and let it pull itself together for a few minutes while we whipped up the cheesy quinoa bites. Which, I have to say, were really quick and easy and turned out much better than I thought they would!

Sadly, this was the best photo I took of them

WIN.

Back to the dough, we spent a couple of minutes pondering what the hell "Gently coil roll" meant, and settled for folding it into three and smushing it into a loaf pan. We then checked the next step of the recipe, and went "IT HAS TO SIT FOR HOW LONG????". 90 minutes, it turned out.

*sigh*

So we went and ate our cheesy quinoa bites in front of the final episode of Pride & Prejudice, followed by a decent chunk of An Ideal Husband before putting the bread in the oven. FOR AN HOUR. Which allowed us to finish An Ideal Husband with five minutes to spare.

The recipe then said to leave the bread until completely cooled before you cut it, but LOL NOPE.

The final verdict on all the things:
Cheesy quinoa bites: could easily have other vegetables added to them. And probably more cheese.
Mint chocolate chip cookies: ZOMG, AMAZING.
Chocolate cinnamon bread thing: Tasty, but a ridiculous amount of work (and sitting around waiting for it to do things that never happened) for the ultimate end product. Also, a very confusing recipe. Also also, with all that cinnamon and a ton of nuts, my brain kept expecting it to contain apple rather than chocolate. But that's probably just me.
An Ideal Husband: Far more serious than either of us remembered. Also, whatever happened to Minnie Driver?
Ryan Gosling as a Dessert Day witness: He fell over once or twice, but didn't judge us for squealing about how gross it was to touch raw egg. So I'd call that a win!

K xx

Challenge recipe 10: The essential white loaf

Like I said at the weekend, I crossed another challenge recipe off the list on Sunday. If you've got no idea what I'm talking about, you can go here and read about the challenge, the rules I've set and what I've made so far. Anyway, let's get on with the show.

Here's the book:

Now, anyone who's been around me when an advert for Twinings comes on might be a little surprised by this. It's true - I can't stand Nigella Lawson. I don't think anyone really wants to eat food that's been described as 'slutty', and all her cupcakes look like she's forgotten to double the recipe for the cake part, so has filled up the top of the patty pan with icing (see above). Oh, and all her quantities are in weight, because apparently there's no such thing as cup measures in the UK... *sigh* But I was given this book as a birthday present last year, and the rules of the challenge state that I must make use of it.

I've not had a lot of good experiences with celebrity cookbooks in the past. The quantities tend to be completely bizarre, or the cooking times are utter bollocks, or the recipes call for esoteric ingredients that are either disgusting or which cost a fortune. Anyway, I went with bread for the savoury recipe, figuring it was kind of hard to mess that up. Aaaaah, hindsight. What a wonderful thing...

Anyway, here's what you'll need:

Start by weighing out 500g of bread flour:

And clearly I need to get a decent set of kitchen scales. I suspect these are less than accurate...

Add in 7g of yeast (in normal people land, this is 2 teaspoons)...

...and a tablespoon of salt. Yes, you read that right. A TABLESPOON.

Then add in around 300mL of warm water. Nigella recommends that you add 200mL and stir it through, then add a little more if required. I wound up needing at least 250mL, so I'd probably just go with 1 cup in the future!

Mix the water through with a wooden spoon. According to Nigella, you want it to be "a shaggy mess".

Once that's done, add in a tablespoon of softened unsalted butter:

Mix the butter through, and then dump the whole lot out on to the (clean!) bench:

Knead the so-called "shaggy mess" for about 10 minutes, or until it's smooth and stretchy. You may need to add a little more flour - just sprinkle it on the bench and it'll be gradually (ARGH - TWININGS ADVERT FEATURING NIGELLA ON TV...) absorbed into the dough.

Coat the inside of a mixing bowl with a little olive oil, and turn the dough in the oil to coat:

Cover the bowl with Glad Wrap/cling film/Ceran wrap, and put the bowl in a warm place for an hour or two. I put it in the laundry (read: the cupboard in the bathroom that contains the washing machine and the dryer) because the dryer was running and it was the warmest place in the house.

After 1-2 hours (aka all of Prince of Persia and half of Wolverine. I have such quality taste in movies!), the dough should have roughly doubled in size.

Punch it down (which is great anger management!), and then knead it for another minute. When you're done, form it into a loaf shape (or put it into a loaf tin if you own one):

Place it on a baking tray (if you don't have a loaf tin) and cover it with a tea towel to rise again for about half an hour.

While it's rising, preheat your oven to 220 degrees C. Decorate the top of your loaf as you wish - I went with adamantium claw slices (hey, it was only appropriate, given my choice of movie watching! Also, Wolverine attacked it with both hands. OBVIOUSLY...) and a sprinkling of sesame seeds.

Bake it for 35 minutes or until it sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom.

Let it cool for five minutes or so, then transfer to a cooling rack. You can either eat it while it's still warm or leave it until it's cooled completely. I went with the former:

The verdict? It was...okay. Ish. I mean, yes, the recipe works. But it's totally not how *I* would do it.

With my almost five years of history in the brewing industry, I took one look at this recipe and went "BUT WHERE'S THE ADJUNCT????" Yeast needs something to feed on, so most baking recipes that use yeast tend to involve a teaspoon of sugar to get it started, or use milk rather than water (lactose sugars). Sure, the bread rose. But it rose reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally slowly. If I were making it again, I'd start the yeast with a cup of warm water and a teaspoon of sugar, and put it somewhere warm for 10 minutes BEFORE mixing it with the flour.

I know homemade bread is never going to be anything like the store bought stuff or what comes out of a bread machine. But this mostly tasted like yeast. And was really stodgy. The first bite I took gave me the thought "Hmm. This tastes like a brewery farted in the dough." And to be honest? That's not really a thought I want to have about my food. So I wound up throwing out half the loaf.

Needless to say, my opinion of Nigella has not improved... Has anyone had any good experiences with celebrity chef recipes??

K xx

Mixed berry and dark chocolate sourdough bread and butter pudding

Well, it's officially winter in the ACT. And that means COLD. For months on end. Last year, we thought winter had gone, but it made a spectacular three week come back - in OCTOBER... Aaaaaaanyway, the point is that Canberra gives me the prime opportunity to make winter desserts, like this one! So let's make mixed berry and dark chocolate sourdough bread and butter pudding. Here's what you'll need:


Start by slicing the sourdough into thick slices. You'll need five slices. Do as you wish with the rest of the loaf - I recommend toast. Or dipping it in olive oil and balsamic vinegar...

Butter the bread - you'll want to leave the butter sitting out for a couple of hours to actually make it spreadable! And no, margarine or spreadable butter is NOT a plausible alternative...

Mmmmmmmm, butter..................

When you've done that, cut the bread into chunks. No need to make them even or symmetrical or anything - any old chunks will do!

Next, take a block of dark chocolate. According to the recipe, you can also use milk or white chocolate. Or a mixture of all three. But frankly, I think that would be a bit gross... So I'll stick to dark chocolate!

Chop the chocolate into chunks too:

Next, we start on the custardy bit. Take four eggs and chuck them into a bowl. Sorry about that broken yolk. It looks so...messy...

Then pour in 1 1/4 cups of cream. The recipe calls for pouring cream, but I don't see why thickened cream wouldn't work just as well!

Then add in 1/2 cup of caster sugar:

And a teaspoon of vanilla extract. If you're using vanilla essence, you'll need to double that:

Then whisk the whole lot together until combined:

Teeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeechnically, you should toss all of this together in a bowl, but I was feeling lazy, which is why the end result isn't nearly as pretty as it should be. If you're doing it properly, toss the buttered bread and the chocolate with 1 1/2 cups of mixed berries in a bowl before putting them in a 2 litre ovenproof dish. If you're doing things my way, put the bread into the ovenproof dish, then dump the berries and the chocolate on the top...

Pour the custard mixture over the top:

Mmmmm, berries......

Let it sit for 15 minutes to allow the bread to absorb the custard mixture:

And chuck it into the oven at 160 degrees. Let it bake for 50 minutes - this was about half way through the cooking time:

At the end of the 50 minutes, pull it out of the oven and let it sit for 1o minutes. Like I said before, it's not particularly pretty. It's MUCH prettier if you're not in a hurry and make it properly!!

Cut it into portions or just scoop it out with a spoon. Either way works fine!

Yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum. Again, if I'd taken the time to mix the berries and the chocolate through rather than dumping it on the top, it would be have been more uniform and less stratified. But oh well......... It still tasted pretty damned good!! Although next time, I think I might try it with just raspberries and see how it turns out.

Enjoy!!

K :) xx